Upgrades to the MCL60 made McLaren look genuinely competitive at Silverstone – and that brings with it a different strategic outlook – but what you really want to know is: why did we send Lando out on a Hard tyre?

2023 is a season full of surprises, and we’re now into the part of the season where upgrades are further muddying the waters. We expected the upgrade introduced to the MCL60 over the Austrian and British Grand Prix weekends to improve the car compared to the competition – but how much of an improvement wasn’t entirely clear.

Certainly, we didn’t go to Silverstone with a firm expectation of being quicker than Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin. Arguably, we still didn’t think that after Friday practice, perhaps we weren’t even expecting it when sitting on the grid.

We did know enough at that point to plan a strategy aimed at securing podium places. In association with FxPro and with exclusive insight from McLaren F1 Director of Strategy and Sporting Randy Singh, here’s how the British Grand Prix unfolded…

“We knew the update was working well, but I think it’s fair to say we were quicker than expected relative to other cars – which came as a very pleasant surprise,” says Randy Singh. “In the race, it does affect what you do. I hate to say it, but it does things a bit less difficult! Everything is a little easier when the car is quicker, because you can afford to play it safer, take fewer risks, etc.”

Race engineers say no strategy succeeds better than having a fast car. It’s not as flippant as it sounds: with pace in the car, the team doesn’t have to force the issue. It can afford to react, rather than trying to make things happen. That’s what happened at Silverstone – at least until the Safety Car blew the race apart.

The race in a nutshell

• Clean start, Lando takes the lead, passing VER, Oscar holds P3

• Lap 5, VER retakes the lead, demoting Lando to P2

• Lap 29, Oscar pits from P3, swapping Medium for a New Hard tyre, emerging P6

• Lap 31, Oscar overtakes GAS for P5

• Lap 32, Virtual Safety Car. MAG’s car is burning on the Wellington Straight

• Lap 33, Full Safety Car. Lando, along with the other front runners yet to stop, pits behind the Safety Car. He swaps Medium for New Hard. He retains P2. HAM and ALO pit behind him, HAM emerges in front of Oscar. Oscar is P4

• Lap 39, race restarts. Lando survives early pressure from HAM to secure P2, Oscar comes home P4

The race in numbers

	Lando Norris	Oscar Piastri
Starting Position	P2	P3
End of First Lap	P1	P3
Finishing Position	P2	P4
Speed Trap	311.0km/h (Slowest)	322.2km/h (14th)
Pit-stop	2.23 (Fastest)	2.42 (7th)
Fastest Lap	1:30.543 (2nd)	1:30.850 (4th)

The tyres

Lando’s compound strategy: New Medium>New Hard

Oscar’s compound strategy: New Medium>New Hard

The Strategy… in theory

Going to Silverstone, the team was adamant the British Grand Prix was a one-stop race, and nothing they saw across practice made them think otherwise. This didn’t tally with Pirelli’s prediction, with the tyre supplier believing a Soft>Medium>Soft two-stop strategy was the fastest way to the flag.

These two beliefs are not as contradictory as they sound: Pirelli’s prediction is a guide to an uninterrupted 306.198km around the famous old circuit, with no allowance for traffic, attacking, defending or disruptions. You can overtake at Silverstone – but it’s a place that also rewards a staunch defence, as Lando proved admirably after the restart.

What really happened

There was a lot of drama at Silverstone – but the race was relatively straightforward for the two McLaren cars. After good starts, they ran a long stint on the Medium tyre. Oscar pitted for a Hard tyre on lap 29, emerging in P6. He overtook Pierre Gasly on track for P5, and then the Safety Car comes out. Lando pits from P2 and also takes a Hard tyre and retains his position. Lewis Hamilton pits from P3 and stays in front of Oscar. Fernando Alonso pits from P4 and emerges behind, promoting Oscar to P4. Both drivers stay in those positions to the flag.

The strategy explained

Max Verstappen is very, very quick at the moment, and there was no great consternation when he retook the lead from Lando on Lap 5 and disappeared into the distance. If anything, it made the race more straightforward, as the team could concentrate on the cars behind, most interesting of which were Charles Leclerc, running fourth behind Oscar, and George Russell running fifth but crucially starting the race on a Soft tyre – the only one of the top 10 to not start on a new Medium.

The team decided to have Oscar hold position, rather than attack Lando. With the cars working in tandem, and with slightly better long-run pace than the competition, they were able to gradually pull away from the chasing pack. When Leclerc was five seconds behind Oscar, he was the first driver to blink, pitting for a set of Hard tyres on Lap 18, attempting the undercut.

Five seconds is a comfortable margin, and meant the team did not need to react instantly but could instead look at Leclerc’s times.

“Leclerc stopped at a reasonable point in the race,” says Randy. “We were expecting it from either him or Russell because they had a gap to drop into on their pit-stop windows – and it seemed sensible for him to attempt an undercut. It soon became apparent that he wasn’t very quick on the Hard tyre and wasn’t undercutting anybody. So, rather than pulling other cars in, that knowledge encouraged the cars in front to extend.

“When Leclerc boxed, it made sense for Russell to extend. It wasn’t surprising how long he went but the pace he managed to maintain was impressive. It was concerning that he was on a different strategy to us – we had a good gap and similar pace, and in that situation, the last thing you want is to do something different – but after Friday’s high-fuel runs, we were comfortable that we could get to the end of the race on a Hard tyre with good pace.

“Oscar was just starting to struggle a little bit with the Medium when Russell pitted, and so we pulled him in on the next lap to maintain a good gap, and give him plenty of margin to bring the Hard tyre in.”

The race was blown apart on Lap 32 when Kevin Magnussen pulled over on the Wellington Straight, the rear end of his car on fire. This initially caused a Virtual Safety Car, which was later upgraded to a full Safety Car shortly before Lando entered the pit-lane.

Lando had been due to pit on Lap 32 – because he’d reported his tyres were starting to struggle – but was kept out for another lap when the yellows appeared, given the likelihood of a Safety Car the next time around. He pitted on Lap 33 and swapped to a Hard tyre. It was the fastest pit-stop of the race – but the cars around him swapped to a Soft.

The Safety Car circulated for a long time, eventually pulling in at the end of Lap 38, leaving a 14-lap sprint to the flag.

Both Lando and Oscar – but Lando in particular – struggled to defend against cars on the faster compounds hunting them down, which led to some of the best wheel-to-wheel action Silverstone has seen for quite a few years as Lando and Lewis Hamilton went side-by-side though Copse corner.

However, once the Hard tyre got up to temperature, the pace in the car began to tell, and both drivers were reasonably comfortable as they crossed the line in front of their crew cheering from the pit-wall.

That Hard tyre call…

Amid jubilation on the podium, Lando didn’t shy away from admitting taking the Hard tyre for his final stint wasn’t his preferred route. So, why did the team decide to fit that rather than the Soft compound fitted by Verstappen, Hamilton and Alonso?

There’s a whole host of factors at play, chief of which was the timing of the switch between Virtual Safety Car and full Safety Car.

“So, this is the interesting bit," says Randy. “When the track went VSC there was always a risk it could turn into a full SC – but at the point we had to make a decision, it was a VSC, and under the VSC, we were happy to fit the Hard tyres. We called the pit-crew out and – perhaps unfortunately – the track changed to SC just after the point at which we had committed.

“Lando was coming out of Stowe, about to take the pit-entry, we were already out in the pit-lane with the Hard tyres. We couldn’t risk him going around for another lap, and equally, we couldn’t risk the confusion and potential delay of having the pit-crew swap the Hard tyres they had ready for a set of Softs. Had the track changed a few seconds earlier, then yes, we would probably have fitted Soft tyres.”

When the VSC locked in the gaps, Lando had a 14-second advantage over Hamilton, which gave Mercedes a more comfortable gap in which to make a decision – but would the teams have made the same tyre choices regardless of the Safety Car, and, perhaps more pertinently, do our strategy team think they made the right call to go onto the Hard tyre?

The straightforward answer would be ‘yes – because we successfully defended the position’ – but, as usual, the real answer is more complex. It’s worth noting that, while Lando post-race was stating he wishes he’d taken the Soft tyre, Verstappen, who did take the Soft, was simultaneously saying he wished he’d taken the Hard.

“It’s definitely a tricky one,” says Randy. “While we would have fitted the Soft if there had been time, we knew the Hard tyre was good for that final stint, and, having had Oscar out on that tyre for a couple of laps, we also knew it would be okay at the restart. So, while we were concerned about Lando being under pressure at that restart, we also thought the Hard tyre would be better across that stint.

“The Soft degraded quite a bit more than the Hard in that final stint – I guess that’s where Verstappen’s comments come from. So, the scenario we had was that, even if Lando had lost P2 to Lewis at the restart, there’s a very good chance he would have been able to take the place back before the chequered flag. The Hard tyre was so much quicker at the end of the race.”

Learn how FxPro combines speed, innovation and precision to drive performance in financial markets.